


All I Want for Life Day is You

by stellacadente



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: A little bit of Charles Dickens, F/M, Knights of the Fallen Empire AU, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-05
Updated: 2016-12-05
Packaged: 2018-09-06 19:00:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8765209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellacadente/pseuds/stellacadente
Summary: A delicate medical procedure forces Felix Iresso, now working for the Alliance against Zakuul, to decide where his heart really lies





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Capella](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Capella/gifts).



Felix Iresso woke in his bunk in the Odessen base, in the area known as The Grotto, where the grunts slept. He checked he still had all his parts. Just a habit he picked up from his days in the squads. Went to make sure his head was still on when the pain hit.

_“What did I drink last night? Speeder fuel?”_ he thought, suddenly glad he could still think. Then he remembered, another good sign, that he hadn’t had anything to drink last night.

_Maybe not a good sign._

He knew his days as a walking Sith holocron might be numbered; he’d known that all along. He knew the Outlander, now the Alliance Commander, kept him close because she was worried about him. He also knew that Hutt doctor – now there’s a strange thing – wanted nothing more than to try to download his brain just to see if that was possible. Maybe he was dead and this was the afterlife.  


Funny thing, though, that Hutt doctor had come closer than anyone to being able to do just that without permanent brain damage, or so he thought. The commander wasn’t so sure, and so detailed Felix to her personal protection squad while she went around the galaxy looking for recruits and bringing aid where possible.  


If all Sith had been like her, well, maybe he wouldn’t mind storing their library in his head so much. Maybe the woman he really wanted to be with, his Jedi, his Barsen’thor, wouldn’t have run off Maker knows where when the Order failed so miserably to keep the Eternal Throne from ravaging the Republic like it did.  


No, she was good. Too good. The best person he’d ever known. Hadn’t been hard at all to fall for her. He saw how much it pained her to know how he felt and to know she couldn’t return his affection. He knew she felt something, too.  


But he knew loss. From his days in the refugee camps on Rehemsa, from his days in all the squads on all the planets, in war and in peace. Love and companionship were always just within his reach, until they were not.  


He tried to stand up but as he did, the world went all swirly around him and he made it back to his bunk, if only just.  


*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

  


When he woke up again, his mother was in front of him. Impossible, but there she was. She was standing right by his bunk, gesturing to him to get out of bed. She turned away, exiting through the swing-hinged durasteel door that gave all the privacy he could expect in this bustling hive of activity.  


This time when he stood up, nothing hurt. No shakes, no spinning head, no spinning world. His mother beckoned him into the hallway.  


When he stepped over the threshold, he was back in the camps on Rehemsa. No mistaking that smell, of cooking fires and barely working ‘freshers, of sweat and desperation but also something else. He couldn’t quite put a word to it.  


He followed his mother through the winding pathways between hastily erected tents, some made of recycled fabrics, some of scavenged metal and synthetic scrap materials. Anything was fair game in the camps. He knew where she was going, but he followed like the good son he always was.  


It was their tent, made of some heavy fabric he never did identify, but held up with a durasteel framework his father designed. Made sense, since Pops had been an engineer before.  


The Guide, his mother, pointed to the family, huddled in the corner. There they were, both of his parents sitting arm in arm, his mother, younger in front of him, sharing a piece of flavored protein bar with him and Pops, like it was a gourmet treat at the finest restaurant on Coruscant.  


Not two kliks from the southern border of the camps there were lush, verdant fields of crops, and feedlots for livestock, and fruit trees and wild birds you could take down with a rock and a sling. But all they got here – all the surplus people like his family deserved – was fortified gruel and the occasional protein bar for good behavior.  


But the smile on their faces, he would never forget that. Growing up, Felix took his deprived life for granted. Because his parents didn’t argue like a lot of the others. Sure, he went hungry sometimes. But there was always someone to play with. There were empty tents and cargo crates to play in and around. There were rocks to be thrown and in the rainy season, a stream ran through the western edge of their compound and once everyone had gathered their water for the day, it became a mighty river of imagination. There were occasional bites of a coco-sweetened protein bar.  


Then he got older, and his parents finally got a job clearing the fields of usable bits the machine harvesters left behind. The Guide took him to the recycled cargo crate they now shared with three other families. Not much in the way of privacy anymore and puberty was in full effect. Felix got grumpy a lot. Upset his parents, who never spent a night apart, who always sat right next to each other to eat, who always laughed.  


When he was old enough, he enlisted. He left. The Guide pointed to a shuttle, Felix getting on, barely managing a smile to his parents, waving and crying with joy that their loving boy would get away from this life.  


Then he and the Guide were back at the cargo crate. His parents lying next to each other on a stack of blankets, holding hands, smiling as they fell asleep. They earned a whole day off for giving their most prized possession, their little boy with the big smile and the even bigger heart, to the Republic.  


Felix tried to walk into the crate, to tell his parents he was OK. He’d made it. Hadn’t gotten very far, now that he thought about it, but he was doing fine. As he called out to them, they disappeared. He turned to the Guide to complain, but she was gone.  


He ran back to where she had been, but he tripped along the way and fell to the ground and everything went dark again.  


*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Felix woke to a bright light and a beeping data pad. A woman, her back to him, stood in between him and the incessant beeping. She had a long hank of blonde hair in her hand, which she expertly twisted into a bun and pinned in place atop her head before he realized the beeping had, indeed, stopped.  


She moved away from the pad and exited the room. The door remained open and he was about to follow when the datapad turned into a mini-holotransmitter, displaying an unfamiliar structure built into a mountainside. All around it was sand, a lifeless, burned-out wasteland gradually turning golden, orange and red. Two orbs appeared in the sky as the image resolved and grew larger and larger until it enveloped the room, and the base, and his entire world. He wanted to follow the blonde woman but something about the scene before him called to him and he had to answer. Just a step closer and he would get the answer.  


He felt his feet plant onto the landing pad by an ugly little ship. But he had such fond memories of helping his Jedi down the gangway, even though they both knew she could hurl him half a klik away with just a flick of her hand. In the two years he had known her, she had never fallen once. Still it was their ritual and she accepted it with grace and dignity. Made the ship seem almost cute. Almost as cute as her, her tattooed face pale even for an Iridonian, petite, shy and deadly.  


Had he brought the Jedi here, to this desolate place? How did he know of it? Endless sand and two suns could only mean Tatooine. And this was a typical stronghold for Hutt enforcers, pirate leaders and other scum, and yet she was walking down to the entryway, plugging in an access code, standing still for a scan and it let her in.  


Like she owned the place.  


He followed her trail to the doorway but he couldn’t get in. There was a domed courtyard a few meters away, the transparisteel covering allowing him to see her inside. She sat down on a bench under a white pergola, inexplicably draped with living green vines, studded with pink flowers. She pulled her legs up and began to meditate, lids closed over her golden eyes, her form surrounded with a yellow light.  


He must have stayed there, just watching her, for hours. When she opened her eyes, she looked up at him as though she could see him, or maybe see right through him. A sad look crossed her face. She rose from her contemplation and walked toward a winding staircase that led further into the compound. She never looked back. He watched her until she disappeared.  


“Wake up, lieutenant! Pay attention! You have to fill out requisition form 32Aurek if you want request a vacation and form 47Besh if you want to travel outside normal Alliance trading routes.” It was the blonde woman again. But this time, he could see her face and he knew that face. He knew that name, it was right on the tip of his tongue.  


They were on the landing pad near the main shuttle departure zone.  


“Well, lieutenant?” she asked, using the old Imperial pronunciation of lieutenant. “Do you want to go have a drink with me, or do you want to go back to Tatooine instead? It’s time to choose.” Her tone had softened. She wasn’t wearing armor, but a flowing tunic over trousers that hugged her legs and soft shoes on her feet. Her tunic was greens and golds and pink flowers just like the pergola and her skin almost as white. Her golden hair was down now, framing her face like an aura.  


He was going to beg for more time to decide, but then a shuttle landed on his head and everything went dark.  


*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

  


Felix woke up on the shuttle pad. The Imperial ship that had landed on his head must have thrown him to the edge because he woke up and watched as the entry hatch door slowly opened and the gangway deployed and a dark-robed figure descended down it.  


A small hand, brown like his, reached out for him, waiting until he got up and walked over. He took the figure’s hand as she – he knew who this had to be – led him back into the ship. She said nothing as she led him to the bridge and sat him in the navigator’s chair. She planted herself in the captain’s seat and told him to lay in a course to Rendili.  


Felix had never trained as a nav officer, but somehow, he knew just what to do. Within minutes, they had landed on the planet – a trip that should have taken days. As soon as he sounded the all clear, the ship disappeared. He and the robed figure were standing outside one of the prefab structures the Alliance had become so good at placing around the galaxy.  


There were dozens of them here, surrounded on one side by a rocky hill, with the rest protected by razor wire and a gate manned by Alliance soldiers.  


Another camp. Another refugee camp.  


The robed figure lifted her arms to pull down the hood covering her face. A familiar face, but for the black chasms where her eyes should have been. No, where flat skin should have been. This was the Commander, his Commander, and he knew what she looked like without her ever-present cybernetic visor.  


It wasn’t like this. He went to speak, but she shook her head, red sparks igniting in her eye sockets as she did. She pointed at the door of the metal hut in front of them, ordering him to enter.  


Inside, the blonde woman sat on a chair next to a cot. On the cot lay the lifeless body of a frail, elderly man. An old Imperial uniform cap sat on the table next to the bed. The blonde woman – he could almost remember her name now – was crying, holding a piece of birchant bark in her hands. On the bark was a drawing of herself, faded with age.  


Another woman, a few years older with dark hair and a Havoc Squad insignia on her armor, sat down next to her. The two women hugged. The second one was crying, too. He recognized her: former major and head of Havoc Squad. Married to … married to … what’s his name the grumpy Cathar. She was declared KIA in the first wave of attacks by Zakuul.  


“What am I supposed to do now?” the blonde woman asked her friend. “The Republic cast me out and I denounced the Empire and the Alliance is breaking up and I have no one.”  


The second woman began to console her, but Felix could not hear what she was saying.  


He turned to the robed figure. “Tell me she’s going to be OK. Commander, I know she’s going to be OK.”  


The Commander shook her head again. Red sparks turned into full, glowing orbs. She said nothing.  


“No, Commander. Respectfully. I demand that you tell me, is this what is going to happen to her?”  


The red orbs shrunk and the Commander’s real face returned. In her cool, throaty Imperial accent, she said, “This is but one possible future, Felix Iresso. You’ve denied yourself a relationship with someone close to you in hopes of winning someone you can never have. I count you and the Barsen'thor as my friends and if I had any part in giving you false hope, I apologize. I see how this woman who is here with you now looks at you, and you at her. You need to decide where your heart will reside: in the past, or in your present.” She bowed.  


The Jedi's name finally came to him in that moment, but he could not say it. Not when he couldn't remember the other one. "You're right, Commander. All I need I have right in front of me. She is what is real to me. I remember meeting her on Balmorra. Shoved a form in my face the moment I got off the shuttle from the Resistance base. Saw she had a captain’s stamp on her armor. Havoc Squad. She was all business, all the time.  


“Until that day the other Imperial showed up. Your husband, Commander. I remember her asking him about her father, and he took her hands in his and said he didn’t know, but he would help her find him no matter what. She started to cry, and then laugh, and they walked away.”  


The Commander’s apparition nodded. No red sparks this time. “You have been granted a memory I would give everything I own to have experienced, Felix. And you have been granted a second chance at love. The only question now is, will you take it?” And at that, the Commander began to fade from view.  


Felix thought he knew the answer, but how could he love a woman if he couldn’t remember her name?  


He ran through every woman’s name he knew until the bombs began falling. He grabbed the blonde woman and pulled her under a nearby desk. He almost got the words “I love you” out before everything went black.  


*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

  


“Elara! Elara Dorne!” he shouted out with glee.  


Felix sat up on the bed where he was lying and immediately, three people grabbed parts of him and kept him from getting up.  


“Yes, lieutenant, I’m here.” She was one of the three holding him.  


“Hah! I couldn’t remember your name!”  


She smiled. The others let go, but she held onto his left arm. “Well, I’m glad your memories have returned. Hopefully, it’s not so crowded in that head of yours anymore.”  


He gave her a puzzled look. The Commander answered the question he was about to speak.  


“Do you remember, Felix? Dr. Oggurobb figured out a way to extract the holocron that was implanted in your memories.”  


He did remember now, and he smiled. The Hutt had warned him he might experience hallucinations and intense dreams during the process. He had promised if he remembered anything “Sithy,” he’d share it immediately.  


He didn’t remember anything. Maybe something had been downloaded? He didn’t want to be a disappointment.  


“Did any of that Sith knowledge survive?” he asked he Commander. He also remembered the doctor fretting over the loss of a potential wealth of reference material. The petite archaeologist who was also standing by the bed had expressed interest, too, but chided the doctor that a person’s health and well-being came first.  


“No. I had to make a decision between saving you and saving it. It wasn’t a choice at all,” the Commander said, shaking her head. No sparks, no glowing orbs. _A good sign._  


He was back in his own life. Now he had a choice to make.  


He waited until the others moved out of earshot, over to where Oggurobb was “ho-ho-ho-ing” over the wealth of medical data he did get from the procedure itself. But she, Elara, remained by his side.  


“Hey, when I get out of this bed, can we go for a drink at the cantina?”  


She smiled, then she blushed, then she said, “As long as you don’t make me dance.”  


He laughed. “OK, but I might ask you to share a ration bar with me. I hope that’s not too weird.”  


She gave him a quick salute and said, “Felix Iresso, that would not be weird at all.”  


He reached over and grabbed her hand right as bells began to go off all over the base. Not the normal klaxons, though.  


“Well,” Elara said. “That overeager C2 finally figured it out.”  


When she saw the puzzled look on Felix’s face, she explained, “The Commander said on her home planet, people rang bells to mark the start of Life Day festivities. C2-N2 got so excited, he began to leak oil, and set to work on the problem, and it appears he managed to find some way to pull it off!”  


Felix knew that he would manage, too. Elara would manage. The Commander and the Alliance would save the galaxy and they’d all live happily ever after. Or something really close to it.  


But he made a quiet vow to himself, in his now-quiet head: Elara would never be alone and she would always have a home. With him.


End file.
